I'm running 2.6.23.9 linux kernel fedora 8.

I've gone ahead and downloaded the subversion checkout of the
webbrowser.py file to see the differences.  The svn version fixes the
issue, so then I went a hunting as to why.

In the 2.5 version, with a version of firefox running out of my home
directory (but still in my path) webbrowser calles BackgroundBrowser
instead of UnixBrowser.

BackgroundBrowser calls subprocess.Popen(cmdline), where cmdline is a
tuble in form ['/browser/path', '"http://example.com"'], and subprocess
doesn't use/like the double quotes (probably legacy os.popen format)

The difference in the two webbrowser scripts that fixes it is thus:

446a445,455
>     # The default Gnome browser
>     if _iscommand("gconftool-2"):
>         # get the web browser string from gconftool
>         gc = 'gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
2>/dev/n
ull'
>         out = os.popen(gc)
>         commd = out.read().strip()
>         retncode = out.close()
> 
>         # if successful, register it
>         if retncode is None and commd:
>             register("gnome", None, BackgroundBrowser(commd.split()))
448,456c457
<     # The default GNOME browser
<     if "GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID" in os.environ and
_iscommand("gnome-open"):
<         register("gnome-open", None, BackgroundBrowser("gnome-open"))
< 
<     # The default KDE browser
<     if "KDE_FULL_SESSION" in os.environ and _iscommand("kfmclient"):
<         register("kfmclient", Konqueror, Konqueror("kfmclient"))
< 
<     # The Mozilla/Netscape browsers

so it appears to be a problem with gconf that python has to work around.

see:  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python2.5/+bug/83974


So as long as it is in trunk 2.5.2 should fix it! (the patch is not in
2.5.1).  thanks.